


Eye of the Storm

by cowlicklesschick



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-13
Updated: 2015-12-13
Packaged: 2018-05-06 10:00:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5412581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cowlicklesschick/pseuds/cowlicklesschick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a moment of calm, where the wind dies down and the torrents ease and soften, where thoughts can be heard louder than words. It is a moment of relief, but also of fear and preparation, because there always another side to every storm, and the calm never lasts for long. Zutara B3 immediately following the Agni Kai.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eye of the Storm

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, Zutara Week was eons ago. No, I do not care because I really really like how this one turned out and I’m gonna share it anyway because I’m a grown adult and I DO WHAT I WANT.
> 
> At some point (hopefully) I will finish all the zkweek prompts and post them in order. But today is not that day. Have this instead.
> 
> Zutara Week 2015
> 
> Day 7:
> 
> Maelstrom: turbulence; violent turmoil

 

The chains are only just secure around the wrists of the wailing princess; the buildings surrounding the plaza are still in flames and smoke, and the sky is still an ominous red when Katara breaks into a run.

Her knees hit and scrape the flagstones at his side, tearing through her leggings and the top layer of skin, but she ignores the sting and reaches to roll him over, praying to every spirit there is that she’s not too late, that she didn’t waste too much time hurling water uselessly onto sapphire flames.

A low, desperate groan vibrates his chest, and she sniffs back tears, frantically uncorking her water skin and encasing her hands, sinking her awareness into the bones and tendons, the fried tissue that is red and swollen and _she doesn’t know if she can fix it_.

Slowly, oh so slowly, she feels him coming back. It’s as though she’s looking down at the surface of some great body of water, and she can see him rising but he’s not close enough to see clearly, so she reaches down through the cold and the dark and _pulls_ , and suddenly he gasps faintly, and his eyes open just enough to let her see the fading light of the comet reflected in them, the red turning gold into something as vivid and bright as the element he wields.

“Thank you, Katara…” His voice is like the rest of him – cracked and splintered, hanging on by frayed strands.

The tears can’t be stopped, not now, and she smiles as much as she can before leaning over him.

“I think I’m the one who should be thanking you,” she tells him softly.

It doesn’t surprise her when he moves to sit up; if there’s one thing she knows about Zuko, it’s that he views pain and suffering as a part of life, a part of _his_ life, and his preferred way of dealing with it is to pretend that it’s not there. So she says nothing, only helps pull him to his feet and stands ready just behind him in case his legs refuse to be as unshakable as the rest of him is.

The look on his face when he sees Azula hurts more than anything else.

There’s a look of sorrow, of regret, of love tinged with anger and bitterness, of confliction. Katara knows those looks. Her own face remembers well how they sit heavy on one’s brow, settle into the frown-lines beside the mouth.

Azula’s sobs abruptly cease, and in the eerie quiet Katara suddenly remembers where they are and what they’ve just done.

Her comforting hand on Zuko’s shoulder turns to a supporting grip around his middle.

“Can you stand?”

He nods, wincing as he tries to straighten so he’s not placing so much weight on her, and together they head for the palace steps. The ornate, heavy doors are open slightly, and Katara can’t help but wonder if she will have to guide him past piles of charred bodies.

Luckily, the entrance hall is void of both the living and the dead, but that doesn’t help that she has no clue where anything is. Zuko comes out of his pain-induced stupor long enough to grunt “left”, so she points her toes in that direction, and focuses on one step, then the next, and the next, turning where he indicates and hoping she won’t have to drag him there.

The corridors are hung with lush tapestries, ornate murals and paintings, yet there doesn’t seem to be a living soul within ten miles. At last they turn down a smaller, but still luxurious hall, and Zuko’s pace quickens despite the fact that he’s on the verge of passing out.

The door he reaches for gives way easily, and Katara vaguely takes into account the drawn curtains, the chair, the wardrobe, the massive bed pushed against the wall. It takes some maneuvering, but in a few minutes he’s stretched out on the red sheets, panting and grimacing and she’s more scared than she’s ever been in her life – she is in Caldera, the belly of the beast that has plagued the world with a century of destruction and suffering. She is partly responsible for the defeat of the Princess, and completely responsible for the survival of the new Fire Lord.

His bed – she recognizes enough personal touches about the room to know that it’s his – is so wide that she has to crawl across the mattress just to reach him, and she’s no sooner on her knees beside him again than he slips into unconsciousness. Though she’d taken comfort in seeing his eyes, she knows that this is better – healing will be a long and painful process, and she’s glad he will be spared at least that much.

She inhales deeply, and reaches for her water, only to jump violently and drop it when footsteps come charging down the hall. She has barely a second to pull the liquid back into her control before the door bursts open, and she ducks, her cheek brushing Zuko’s bare chest as she avoids the chunk of rock that hurtles her way.

Her heart sinks – the Dai Li are still loyal to Azula, and if they have already seen what is left of their mistress, Katara may not be able to hold them all off. She shifts her weight as she hurls an ice spear, and against her leg she feels Zuko, solid and warm and still alive despite all of the ridiculous things the fates have put in his way, and she clenches her jaw, knocks boulders and flying mud clods out of the air with water whips and ice shields, as she slides her body off of the bed to stand on the floor in a stance that Toph would nod approvingly at.

Her fingers twitch, and for a split second she wonders if there is another option, any other course she can take. A shard of earth scrapes her cheek. No, she decides. There is not.

The five intruders pause, quiver and shake, but she curls her fingers, clenches her fists, straightens her knees out of their crouch, and feels the beat and thrum of them beneath her fingertips, as surely as if she’d had one on their pulse point.

Beneath the rounded helmets, she can see their eyes widen in fear. She can’t blame them. Bloodbending terrifies her in its potential, but right now the fate of the entire world is barely alive on the bed behind her.

She thrusts her hands upwards; five bodies hit the ceiling, five heads crack against the hard plaster, five limp forms tumble back to the floor, and Katara is left with now six unconscious bodies, but she barely pauses to drag the soldiers one by one out into the corridor, where they are left in a heap just outside the door.

She slides the bolt and ices the hinges before she turns back to Zuko, and surveys her surroundings again, this time without panic clouding her vision.

There is a window, outside which sits a tall, impressive oak tree. There is a bathroom, complete with the Fire Nation’s revolutionary indoor plumbing. There is a day-old vase of fire-lilies on the side table.

She nods to herself. The water is all around her, and if she runs out of weapons to hurl at any future intruders, she is still not powerless.

The thought makes her cringe, deep within herself, but she grits her teeth and bears it. In the months since Zuko joined them at the Western Air Temple, she has realized that he is just as crucial to accomplishing peace as the Avatar. And right now, with the welting scar on his chest testifying of his dedication to ending the war – that’s all it was, it couldn’t mean anything else, it _couldn’t_ – she is the only hope he has of surviving from his wounds or enemies.

She swears by Yue that she will not fail him. Here, in the midst of the storm and the chaos and the never-ending turmoil, she will be his anchor, and she will not let him drift.

/

Hours pass, the sun’s shadows grow long, yet Katara does not sleep. She is grateful that it is not quite the full moon, meaning that she has two or three more nights of nervous energy that will help her to stay awake.

The daylight hours are the hardest, because the room is warm and dark and quiet. She places sheets of ice over the windows, and while she knows it won’t hold, it feels better than doing nothing. At regular intervals she brings water from the bathroom, trailing behind her in a long, coiling rope, and works at untangling the muscle and energy and chi pathways that contort within his chest, and in between she sets about healing her own various cuts and scrapes, as well as any she finds on him.

The second attack comes that afternoon – two archers with aim good enough to cut the ribbon on her necklace and never touch skin, from a hundred yards away, perched in trees across the courtyard beneath the window. Katara stares at the two small holes in her ice-wall, and at the arrows she’d somehow intercepted, and narrows her eyes.

She takes her stance again, and breathes deeply, focusing on the buzz of life all around her. She stretches the bubble of awareness, stretches and stretches and stretches it, until she can feel the crouched forms of the archers, the soles of their sandals pressed against the wise, deep energy that runs through the tree’s bark.

Their unconscious forms topple to the ground a second later, and Katara doubles the thickness of her ice wall.

/

By the end of day three, Katara has slept for perhaps a total of two hours and fought off five more assassination attempts.

She sits calmly on the edge of the bed, healing when Zuko needs it, fighting when she has to, and all the while relying on the moon to compensate for the lack of food and rest.

It is approaching sunset when she hears footsteps in the hall again, and she gets ready, hands poised, water and ice raised behind her, but she starts when something pounds on the door.

“Katara! Are you in there?”

Before she realizes that she’s moved, she has the door open and has hurled herself into Sokka’s arms. She’s dimly aware that others are rushing past them into the room, but it doesn’t matter – she is no longer alone.

/

It’s several hours later when Katara falls asleep at the dining room table.

Later Sokka tells her that he’d barely managed to catch her before she’d hit her head on the floor, but she remembers nothing past having a plate of food set before her. She thinks it might have been spicy, but she can’t be sure. She ate just enough to prevent herself from starving before her body collapsed from exhaustion, and now, waking up in a room lit with red and gold and sunlight, the sudden mental clarity sends her into a near panic.

“How is he?” She slides off the bed, spares a moment’s glance in the large ornate mirror and winces – there’s no need for her to look like the one who missed death by centimeters – but Sokka (who had nearly had a heart attack when she’d woken up suddenly) places two surprisingly firm hands on her shoulders and plunks her right back onto the edge of the mattress.

“You’re not going anywhere until you tell me what happened.”

Normally she would argue, if only for the sake of arguing, but Katara is too tired and too worried and too tired of _being_ worried.

“Azula challenged him to an Agni Kai. And he almost won, just – Sokka, you should have seen him. He was…it was incredible. I don’t think even Aang can firebend like that.”

Sokka nods his understanding. Aang is powerful, much more so than most of the world realizes, but he doesn’t have the spirit of a firebender. Zuko does, and even when skills levels are matched it is the inner fire that makes all the difference.

“She was off, unstable…” Katara doesn’t know quite how to describe what the Princess has become, but Sokka waves a hand.

“We’ve seen her. We found her in the courtyard when we got here.”

Katara blinks, surprised. “They didn’t move her?”

“They?” Sokka asks sharply. “Who, they?”

“The…the Dai Li…”

“Oh. No, they didn’t…how many of them came after you guys, by the way? There’s a pile of them taller than me outside Zuko’s door.”

“I lost count,” Katara says tiredly. “I barely got him inside before they started coming. Between healing him and fighting them off…well. You saw what state that left me in.”

Sokka nods. “How did he get hurt?” He asks this much more quietly.

“Azula…she….” Katara swallows. All of a sudden she realizes that she will have recount this story to General Iroh at some point, and the tears she has been holding at bay since Zuko threw himself in front of her suddenly burst through the dam.

She is dimly aware of Sokka’s arm coming around her shoulders, and as she wrangles herself back under control she hears him say: “….don’t need to worry, he’s doing great, the healers say he’s made a lot of progress in the three days you’ve been asleep – “

Katara’s head shoots up so fast she missed Sokka’s jaw by inches.

“Thr – three days? I’ve been out _for three days?_ ”

“Well, yeah, Katara, you were _really_ tired – “

“No kidding,” she snaps. She shrugs his arm off and almost runs to the door. “I can’t believe – what if the healers are in on the coup? What if they’re loyal to Azula or Ozai or whichever lunatic wants to ruin the world’s last chance for peace? Why would you let me sleep for that long? Has he even woken up yet? Is his heartrate regular? Is he having trouble breathing?”

The whole tirade is punctuated by her footsteps, short and sharp against the palace floors, and by timid interjections from Sokka. She doesn’t slow down until she reaches the end of the hall – by some miracle Sokka had the mental aptitude to at least put her nearby – and the guards wisely step to the side after they open the doors, and she storms inside, only to stop in her tracks when she sees him sitting up against the headboard.

She barely notices Toph, Aang, and Suki sitting around him; she catches glimpses of blue in her periphery but her eyes are completely zeroed in on the gold ones she hasn’t been sure she’d ever see again.

“Katara,” he says, surprised. “Are you – “

He doesn’t get a chance to finish, instead he finds himself with a double armful of Katara, who smashes her face into the crook of his shoulder and lets out every last tear born of terror and grief.

At some point she collapses against him enough to where he simply sits her across his lap, and rocks her gently. He doesn’t say anything, he just holds her. And she’s grateful.

Finally – whether it’s been minutes or hours, she doesn’t know – she pulls back and scowls at him.

“If you _ever_ do something like that again – Zuko I swear to Tui I – “

“I’m fine,” he says. One of his hands smooth back her hair.

“But you _weren’t_ fine. You almost _died_ , and – “

“Katara.” His hands cup her face, wiping away tears and looking into her eyes. “I’m alright.”

She looks at him, sees that he is fine, really, even if he’ll be in recovery for several weeks if not months, and she allows one tiny, tiny smile to peek through.

“Okay,” Sokka clears his throat. “Would either of you like to tell me what that was all about?”

“I think that’s a good idea.” Katara jumps at her father’s voice, and she cringes just a little when she sees Iroh and Pakku standing with him in the corner.

She slides off of Zuko’s lap and sits beside him, and underneath the embarrassment and the receding fear, she can see that he has made vast improvements – his color is good, his breathing looks to be regular, and even though she won’t be thoroughly satisfied until she gets a good look at the wound itself, she allows a small measure of comfort to settle her nerves, at least for the time being.

“We planned to fight Azula together,” Zuko starts. “But she was already…slipping when we got here. So when she challenged to me to an Agni Kai, I accepted. And I was winning, too, but…”

Katara slips her fingers between his and takes up the tale. “She shot lightning at me.”

Her quiet words are greeted with gasps from Aang and Sokka. Everyone else goes pale, and her father’s knuckles grip the hilt of his sword tightly.

“But…” she glances to the side, and can see the flush working its way up Zuko’s neck. Some small part of her wants to laugh – of course he would be embarrassed _now_. “Zuko…well, he –“

There’s a long, shuddering breath from the corner. “Nephew…” Iroh’s eyes are shining with a strange mixture of pride and sorrow.

Zuko swallows heavily, but unashamedly he meets the gazes of their dumbfounded audience. For several long heartbeats, no one says a word. Then Hakoda walks slowly toward the bed, approaching from Katara’s side. He places one hand on her hair, and extends the other.

Katara looks up into her father’s face; it’s twisted with too many emotions to name and he can’t seem to find his voice, but Zuko grasps his forearm and simply nods, understanding that some debts are too deep for words.

Sokka is next, but he sits down on the bed next to Zuko and looks him in the eye.

“Y’know, when I asked you to keep her safe, that’s not quite what I had in mind.”

For once, the laughter is well-timed.

/

At long last, she returns to his room, after eating what feels like her weight in khomodo-chicken. She has drunk plenty of tea, but not even her father can convince her to rest before tending to Zuko again.

This time, it’s just the two of them. They are both tired, weary from the burden of saving the world, a burden that would dwarf the shoulders of giants, and yet they have born it in their youth and persevered. Katara doesn’t know if all their scars are testament to the things they have lost along the way, or the things they managed to save.

Take Zuko’s, for example. The glossy red that covers half his face tells of a loss of innocence, an introduction to pain and suffering. Yet it also tells of an enduring goodness, an intangible purity embedded in his soul that not even the wrath of an entire nation could tarnish.

His new scar, a starburst that is bright red against the pale ivory of his chest and abdomen, tells just how deeply that root of goodness runs within him. It tells of desperation, of surrender, of fear.

She is afraid to wonder if it might say anything else.

Katara’s hands glide over the marred flesh, knitting back together what she could and soothing the pain of what she couldn’t, and once the water’s glow fades away and she recorks her skins, she allows her eyes to meet his. It’s different than it was, in a roomful of people. Here, it’s raw, exposed. Vulnerable.

Zuko doesn’t seem to care if she sees right down into the depths of him. This unnerves more than anything, because he’s always been the one to hide behind walls, and now he’s not even bothering to scale them before he knocks them flat. His hand drifts up; the back of one finger dusts her cheek softly. She nearly comes undone by the gesture. Her thoughts seem too loud in the heart-pounding silence.

She feels like she is in the eye of the storm – calm, but there is a knowledge that more turmoil, more fighting is on its way. There is nothing they can do to stop it, only brace themselves and secure their lifelines. Her fingers lace through his, finding anchorage in the life she can feel beneath his skin, and she dares to hope that the worst of it is behind them.

“I’d do it again,” he says quietly.

Her breath hitches.

“You know why, too.”

She longs to close her eyes, but the gold is mesmerizing, and she can’t look away. He has demolished his walls to the point where not even rubble remains. Her pulse is deafening, but she doesn’t notice anything other than the way he’s leaning closer.

“No matter what,” he breathes. “No matter what’s coming, we’ll make it through. I promise.”

Wordlessly, she nods, and lets him tilt her head back. She lets him press promises to her lips, lets herself give her own promises in return. She wraps her hands around his neck and tugs him closer, tighter, warmer, until she can’t quite tell whose hands are where, but everything is warm and solid and here, and she realizes that this, this anchor she has found, will not be shaken by any storm the world can bring.

 


End file.
